Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Well, now. What do we have here? Could it be a recipe featuring that most magical of ingredients... BACON?

Guys, this actually tasted pretty good, but let me tell you why it's the most artery-cloggingest thing (possibly tied with the Savory Meat Loaf, of course) I have made so far:

1) There is bacon.2) The little bread triangles are fried in rendered bacon fat.3) The bacon and bacon-bread are placed on top of a butter-based sauce.

I was unsure of how to eat this. I scooped some of the chicken cream sauce into a little bowl, and I took a bacon roll and a fried toast triange, but the recipe gives no hints on how to eat this interesting creation. Do you eat the sauce with a spoon? Do you dip the bread and bacon in the sauce? I tried the latter, but I failed to see how I could serve it as a meal.

Now, for the record, I don't like to see food go to waste. Even with my most vile recipe failures, I try to up-cycle them into something palatable enough to bring for my lunch the next day. The Bacon Roll Sunburst was soooo close to being good, that it just needed a few tweaks to perfect it. With that in mind, I decided to chop up the bacon and mix it into the cream sauce with the chicken, then toss it with some penne noodles. It became chicken carbonara! Huzzah for fixing things!

Cut each slice of bacon in half, and make 8 bacon rolls. Cook slowly, with the rinds, until crisp and brown. Remove and use rendered bacon fat to fry small triangles of bread for garnish. Make sauce in a flameproof casserole with the butter, flour, milk and stock cube dissolved in 4 tablespoons boiling water. Add chicken, heat through in sauce. To serve, arrange triangles of fried bread round the edge of the casserole and top with the bacon rolls. Serves 4.

*This recipe comes from the Woman's Own Book of Casserole Cookery (home of everyone's least favorite lady-parts euphemism casserole, Saucy Fish Pie), written by Jane Beaton, published in 1967.

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Jen tests questionable recipes from older cookbooks, and subjects her stomach lining to the results. She sometimes writes a column for Persephone Magazine and is a contributor to the Geekquality podcast and blog.